@[Ω]I'll try it out when it goes public but I honestly don't see myself playing it long term. The end game looks ridiculously RNG gated since their version of shinies have stat advantages to regular monsters.

True. And the developers DID say they took inspiration from the franchise. But they also said that they're not trying to copy or "replace" it. Seems unfair to the devs to only focus on the influence and not how they put their own spin on the idea.

Not even that, really. The problem with Yo-kai Watch is that Level 5 is notorious for taking a long-ass time to localize their games, to the point that the newest installment of the series is usually out by the time the US gets the previous installment.

Yo-kai Watch also has a much worse tendency to discard gameplay elements than Pokemon.